Kids these days turn to technology for fun. When grandkids ask me "what did you do in the old days Gram? It must have been dull for you with nothing to do."
Let me tell you, it was never dull. We were healthier back then because we got outdoors in the sunshine and stayed active from morning til night.
My question of the day is "What did you do for fun before TV?"
For me it was being outdoors with friends. I was a kid when we got our first TV. Back in the day it was only on for a limited number of hours a day, in black and white, and very few shows were for kids. Every nite when it shut down they played christian music and showed the clouds and heavens on the screen. Anyway, we were never glued to it because of lack of interest back then.
I played outdoor games every day on the pavement in front of our buildings. Kick the Can, Tag, Freeze, Hide and Seek, Jump Rope, Dodge Ball, a ball game tossing the ball against the brick wall of a building and doing different moves as we got futher into the game, like one plain toss, 2 tosses with a bounce, 3 rapid moves, 4 from behind our back and so on. Oh darn, what's the game with a pretty piece of glass you tossed from block to block, 1-9 and hopped up the first 3, split your legs, then one in the middle and then a split at the end??????? I remember we used to hunt for a nice piece of old glass in empty lots to use to toss from block to block. Got it! Hop Scotch!
And then we had game cards that we tossed against the wall to see who won the cards by being the furtherest or a leaner or landing on top of another card. They were mostly baseball players cards. Also marbles, with the clear ones and the tiny ones and the monster marbles.
We also had comic books that we swapped. We could buy them cheap at the corner store if they had the top half of the front page removed. That meant the store owner could not sell it so the supplier let them have it for a smaller price after tearing the cover in half and the top part away and he let us kids have them a lot cheaper than the new ones. I think they were a nickel at our corner store. We would bring out our collection to swap other kids for theirs to read and enjoy. I used to love the Casper comics best. We also had those old roller skates with the key that you tightened around your shoe. Only worked well on paved sidewalks, not the brick ones, of which we had lots. The bricks would heave during the winter and have dips and hollows. If you tried skating over them, the skates usually split in half.
I was out in all kinds of weather. In the winter, I was out til I got really cold or my mittens and bottoms of my dungarees got wet and then I would go indoors, open the oven door on our oil-fired cooking/heating kitchen stove, pull up a chair in front of the store and put my stocking feet on the fender and the mittens over the oven door, til they were dry and I could go outdoors again. Weather didn't stop us. I think that's why we were more trim in those days. I remember very few kids with overweight problems. In fact, I can only think of one from my early teen days and she was from a further neighborhood and was a bit older and had a reputation for 'being with boys' was the term back then, so we never associated with her.
I can honestly say I was never bored and I was healthy and trim and active in my youth without games on computers and telephones.
If you lived on a farm you had your chores to keep you busy. Feeding the chickens, weeding the garden, harvesting the vegetables. All good fresh air every day.
Unfortunately these days its sitting if front of a boob tube or computer day after day. No fresh air, no activity and eating snacks and getting chubby and maybe being more susceptible to colds and flu and things that make youth ill. I feel badly for our youth.
Of course at this moment we are all in isolation because of a new and deadly virus. Technology seems to be the way to handle isolation with kids in doing their school work from home and playing games to keep their brains busy. They should not be out socializing with their peers today. Times have changed and in this case, for the better for isolation purposes for our youth. They at least have something to keep their brains active.
Stay safe everyone Take care of yourself. Help another if possible.
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